Back in beta and the first few year(s) of Rift, I started with a bard and loved it. I loved being support and healing with my cadence.

I was gone for 2 years, came back. Started a fresh one to get back into the game.

I am absolutely USELESS in PvP and dungeons (for off healing).

She is currently 17, she has decent gear, some blues. My cadence heals for 5 health a tick. I have 1200 health right now.

That is the most useless feeling ever not being what you are labled, support.

Heals require how hard you hit... ie...attack power. And for us rogues that's through dexterity.
How are your stats in that.

I've been rolling new rogues just to play with the new new content purchased through the store. I purchase the bundled set and Master boa Sigil. Get enough plats built up to fill it up.
It's a good start without any runes and such. It may look like twinking. Not quite full twinks with those high level augs and enhancement. But solid enough to put me up in the top of the wf leader board. Both in damage and heals.

Back in beta and the first few year(s) of Rift, I started with a bard and loved it. I loved being support and healing with my cadence.

I was gone for 2 years, came back. Started a fresh one to get back into the game.

I am absolutely USELESS in PvP and dungeons (for off healing).

She is currently 17, she has decent gear, some blues. My cadence heals for 5 health a tick. I have 1200 health right now.

That is the most useless feeling ever not being what you are labled, support.

Bards are good at level 60, especially bard/tact for AoE fluff healing. Bard is never going to keep someone alive under focus fire and it's not really intended to. It's a support soul. If you want straight up heals, go bard/tact. If you want straight up support (buffs, etc.) 61 bard is better.

I can't speak for level 17 and don't really care. You are going to need to get to 60 before things balance out.

Everything is balanced for 60 so just keep playing and switch things up.. there's a lot of combos.

Although when I initially leveled I remember a bard hybrid spec I came up w/ being fairly overpowered in PVP level 10-29. People 5 levels higher would be running from me in pvp if they saw me coming. But they couldn't get away. And then I hit level 30 BG's and was ready to resume the ownage when.. what's this? Other classes critting me for 1k+ now.. uh.. yeah.. too much damage too fast. Can't heal through that, can't match that dps. Spec dead.

Bard is useful in other ways. There are some maps that you don't get mounts (Black Garden, Karthan Ridge, Runemaster Library), and bard speed is good. You can help buff your team, and healing really depends on spec. There are dps and healing bard templates. Watch what your teammates are playing, if no other rogue is going bard, switch it up if you like.

Mostly though in low level (and to 60s' chagrin, sometimes high level) battlegrounds, there isn't much team play. So always have some sort of soloer/survival build in your arsenal for when you can't rely on teammates.

If you want to support heal, use Tactician for now. Bard becomes good at 60, but at lower levels you are correct that it is next to useless. My GF was leveling her Rogue as a Bard in WF's for a while and I always thought she was just playing like crap because she never had much healing, then I looked at her playing one day and was seeing the lowest heals ever, to the point where the extra DPS would have made much more sense than "trying" to support. Switched her to Tact, got better. Now she's 60 and runs 40 Bard/36 Tact, which is great.

If you want to support heal, use Tactician for now. Bard becomes good at 60, but at lower levels you are correct that it is next to useless. My GF was leveling her Rogue as a Bard in WF's for a while and I always thought she was just playing like crap because she never had much healing, then I looked at her playing one day and was seeing the lowest heals ever, to the point where the extra DPS would have made much more sense than "trying" to support. Switched her to Tact, got better. Now she's 60 and runs 40 Bard/36 Tact, which is great.